Hello. While NeHe has in the past been an excellent resource for getting started with OpenGL, this has not been the case in the current shader-based era. Programmers weaned on fixed-function often have very difficult times coming to understand how things work with shaders. And with OpenGL 3.1 removing much of the functionality that the NeHe tutorials depend on, I felt that a void needed to be filled.

I'm interested in commentary and criticism of my tutorials. The content, the source code, whatever. I get a lot of "Oh that's great" or the occasional bug report correcting a typo or some such. But I don't get any real, in-depth criticism from someone who actually knows this stuff, or to have a dialog with someone who's knew that doesn't really know what's going on. I'm mostly interested in whether I've explained concepts properly so that new users will understand them effectively. I also want to know whether I have missed some valuable concept in a tutorial. Or even just a debate about whether you think it was appropriate to wait until Tutorial 14 to start on textures (the reasoning is actually explained).

Before you start however, know this: my tutorial series is not complete. I know that I've barely scratched the surface of texturing; I've still got two more texture-focused tutorials planned (one that covers projective texturing, textures as lightsources, and cubemaps. And one that covers bumpmapping in various forms). I'm also well aware that blending and render-targets have not been touched yet. Again, those are planned for the future. So this isn't necessarily about what large features are missing, so much as how I can improve upon the structure I have designed. Or even commentary on whether you think that the structure is effective for teaching new programmers.

I've done a fair number of NeHe's tutorials way back when, and having remained purely in 2D in more recent times; I am somewhat of a 3D newbie. Your tutorials look interesting, and I hope to go through them soon. I can give you my opinion of them from a beginner's perspective.

Just a question though: I notice there were some lua files under Tutorial 1. What are they used for? I've never used lua files before and have little knowledge about them.

Thanks for the effort - myself and surely others in the community appreciate it